An Excerpt from THE SHATTERED MASKby
Richard Lee Byers (to be published by Wizards of the Coast, 2001)

Shamur gave Thamalon time to draw his longsword and come on guard, but
not an instant longer. She immediately leaped into distance with the springing
advance called a balestra, feinted a head cut, and then, when her husband's
blade came up to parry, attempted a strike to the chest.

Thamalon reacted to the true attack in time. Retreating a step, he swept his
sword just far enough to his left to close the line. The two blades rang
together, and Shamur waited to counterparry his riposte. But instead of
attacking in his turn, he simply took a second step backward.

"For the love of Sune," he said, his black browns
drawn down in a fierce scowl, his cheek bloody from the shallow gash she'd cut
there, "at least explain what this is all about."

"I
told you," she said. "I know what you did." She advanced and
attacked again, beating his blade aside, then lunging and driving her point at
his throat.

He hopped back, and the attack fell short.
Shouting, her skirts whispering on the fallen snow, she ran at him, striving to
plunge her point across those last few inches. He pivoted and brushed her weapon
out of line. Now her blade was pass, beyond his body and poorly positioned
for either offense or defense, and the safest option was to dash on past her
opponent and spin around to face him.

So that was what she attempted, meanwhile watching for his
riposte so she could counterparry as best she might. Unfortunately, she was so
intent on his sword that she lost sight of what his other hand was doing.

Suddenly his unlit horn lantern was hurtling down at her skull.
She saw she had no hope of dodging it, so she threw up her unarmed hand and
caught the blow on her forearm. One of the milky oval windows shattered, and the
pewter frame around it buckled. The impact numbed her limb and knocked her
stumbling off balance.

From the corner of her eye, she
glimpsed him sprinting after her, the ruined lantern raised for a second blow.
Frantically, her boots slipping in the snow, she wrenched herself around and
thrust her broadsword at his face, an attack out of distance but one that at
least served to bring him up short.

Shamur scowled. Skilled
combatant that he was, Thamalon had nearly had her then. It didn't matter how
furious she was, she mustn't attack so recklessly, as if there was nothing more
at stake than a touch in a friendly fencing bout. This duel was life and death.
More warily now, sizing up her adversary, looking for openings, waiting for an
advantageous moment to attack, she moved in on him again.

"Just
tell me!" Thamalon said. A snowflake drifted down to light on his shoulder.
The frigid wind moaned.

"And then you'll lie and deny it,
and I won't believe you," Shamur said. "Why don't we save ourselves
some time, and simply fight?" She slashed at his torso, and he used the
battered lantern like a buckler to block the cut. Her blade lodged in it
somehow, and when she jerked it back, it tore the makeshift shield from his
grasp and weighted her own weapon down, rendering it useless. Seeing his
opportunity, he charged her, his longsword lifted high to brain her with the
heavy round steel pommel. She retreated hastily, flailed with her own sword, and
the lantern shook free to land with a clank on the ground. She extended her
point, and Thamalon had to wrench himself to one side to avoid impaling himself.

That desperate attempt to check his momentum sent him reeling.
He was virtually defenseless, but Shamur couldn't take advantage of it. Her
scramble backwards had deprived her of her own balance, and in the instant it
took her to recover, he did so as well.

But she knew there would be other openings, and, smiling, she
advanced on him again.

"Tell me," he said. The blood
had run down to the ermine collar of his warm winter cloak, staining the white
fur red.

Shamur beat his blade to the side, then thrust at his
shoulder. Hopping back a step, his glossy black boots with their gold and silver
spurs crunching the hindering, treacherous snow, he deflected her blade with a
lateral parry. She waited an instant for his riposte, then, when it didn't come,
attempted a remise, lunging closer and renewing her attack with angulation,
trying to hook around the longsword which still theoretically closed the line.

That was what Thamalon had been waiting for. With flawless
timing, waiting until she was entirely committed to her action, he widened the
parry. The two blades scraping together, he shoved Shamur's broadsword so far to
his left that it had no hope of piercing its target. Worse, she was pass
again, virtually unable to make another attack until she cocked her arm back as
far as it would go or withdrew from such close quarters. Trying to take
advantage of the situation, he grabbed for her wrist with his unarmed hand.

It was a mistake. He might be as good a fencer as she, but she
very much suspected she was the better brawler, a skill she'd honed in
disreputable taverns, thieves' dens, and alleys from Sembia to the Moonsea. She
whipped her sword arm far to the side, easily avoiding his attempt to seize and
immobilize it, and at the same time smashed the heel of her empty hand into her
husband's jaw.

Thamalon's head snapped back, and he stumbled.
Shamur recovered forward from her lunge and swept the broadsword in a savage cut
at his torso.

By the time he saw the blow coming, it was too
late to parry, but he managed to jump back. Her attack, which should have
sheared through ribs and into the lung beneath, merely grazed him, ripping his
lambskin jacket, doublet, and shirt and scoring the flesh beneath. Snarling, she
instantly attacked again. He retreated out of distance. She started to rush
after him, then stopped, reminding herself again that, vengeful as she was, she
couldn't let it make her wild or rash. Thamalon would take advantage of any
mistake. So, taking her time, catching her breath, she stalked closer, then
began to advance and retreat, advance and retreat, with the mincing, cadenced,
subtle steps of a fencer attempting to hoodwink his opponent's perception of the
distance. He hitched back and forth in time with her. "I drew first blood,
old man," she sneered. Perhaps she could rattle him with taunts and
insults, although actually, she doubted it. As far as she knew, none of his
other foes had ever succeeded with such a ploy.

"Second," said Thamalon, calmly as she'd expected, "depending
on how you're counting."

"I don't count the scratch on the cheek," she said. "You
hadn't drawn a weapon. That was just to rouse you from your usual senescent
daze."

"Well," he replied, "if I'm all that
senile, and you can kill me any time you like, then what harm would it do for
you to explain to me what in Valkur's name this is all abou--"

As he spoke, she stepped forward, but then did not retreat again.
Lulled by and still following the rhythm she'd established and now abandoned,
Thamalon advanced into distance. She instantly cut at his head. It was the
perfect moment for it, because even the greatest warrior who ever lived couldn't
retreat at the same instant he was stepping forward. But Thamalon whipped the
longsword just in time to stop her weapon from splitting his head. The impact
rang like a bell, and notched both of their blades.

He riposted with a cut at her leg. She counterparried, feinted
an attack to the flank, then tried for his head again. He skipped back out of
distance, his point extended to hold her back.

He continued to
fight in much the same manner, constantly giving ground. Many swordsmen
habitually relied on the edge, sometimes carrying blades which scarcely even
possessed a point. But the tip of Thamalon's weapon was sharp as a needle, and
he knew as well as Shamur how to use it. As she advanced, he constantly
threatened her wrist. Knowing that a combatant is most vulnerable at the moment
he attacks, he clearly wanted her to try to penetrate deep into the distance
with killing strokes at his torso and head. Since his sword wouldn't have as far
to travel, he planned to catch her with a stop thrust to the forearm before her
blade could touch him.

It was a patient, defensive mode of
fighting such as might be expected of such a careful, calculating man. Shamur's
natural inclination was to fight far more aggressively, yet she comprehended
Thamalon's style of swordplay very well. She'd often employed it in her youth,
when robbing her fellow merchant-nobles in the street. Not wishing to kill them
or their bodyguards either, she'd waited for the chance to inflict wounds that
incapacitated but would neither slay nor permanently cripple. Or better still,
to capture her opponent's blade in an envelopment and spin it out of his grasp.

Given her understanding of Thamalon's strategy, she doubted it
would serve him well in the long run. He couldn't retreat forever, not with the
tangle of bare oaks, maples, and brush surrounding the clearing. Every time he
fetched up against it, it halted him as effectively as a wall, and provided her
with an excellent chance to attack. Besides, if one didn't count the half
century that the rest of the world had somehow experienced without her, he was
more than ten years her senior, and already bleeding as well. Therefore, let him
play his waiting game. She was willing to wager that his stamina would flag
before hers.